What Is This Tiny House Thing Anyway?

The tiny house movement is an anti-establishment movement that examines the anti-American Dream wherein need overshadows want and relationship is valued over consumption.

Anyone who has hung around tiny houses, small houses, alternative houses, etc. long enough has heard someone speak or write just like the above quote. In fact, if you’re like me you are even guilty of using some of the buzz phrasing. But make no mistake. There is a lot of contempt for folks who talk this way. In my opinion such buzz words and phrases actually serve to mask ones own misunderstanding or lack of knowledge in the first place. For those on the “outside” looking in it can seem like fluff wording used to obscure simple concepts from them. Whatever the case. Buzz words kill! They go beyond insecurity or exclusion. They also serve to stifle creativity, innovation, and even acceptance.

So what then – you may be asking – is the tiny house movement then? What are tiny houses? What is tiny living? Great question. Is it even a movement?

Honestly, I don’t know.

Social movement? Check.

Anti-consumerism? Check.

Need -vs- Want? Check.

Backlash? Check.

The tiny house “movement” as I have come to understand it is really just about people – normal people – living as they choose. They favor lifestyle over housing obligation, career obligation, social obligation, and the like. Some choose to do so by building on a trailer. Some build accessory dwellings. Some live in RVs. Some live aboard boats. Some develop communal spaces. But at the very root of the movement (and I use that word while cringing, mind you) it is about people living life free and on their own terms; not wanting the overhead of a big house, not wanting all the possessions, not wanting the responsibility, and the list goes on.

The tiny house community stands for scaling back in protest to the convention that ‘bigger is better’; challenging the old ideas of housing, especially in light of the economic downturn and real estate crash, as it were. The movement raises a question for many people, not just tiny house advocates. What do we really need to be comfortable in our living environment?

Have you ever asked yourself that question?

Did you know the typical American home is around 2600 square feet? Tis true. Just ask our friends at the United States Census Bureau. The typical small or tiny house is roughly 100-400 square feet. Like their larger counterparts they too come in all shapes, sizes and forms. The difference though is that tiny houses focus on smaller spaces and simplified living. And people are joining this movement for a host of reasons including environmental concerns, financial concerns and the general pursuit of more time and freedom. For most Americans 1/3 to 1/2 of their income is dedicated to the roof over their heads. This translates to 15 years of working in a life time just to service a mortgage and because of such 76% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

So what is the alternative? Live smaller. While I certainly don’t think tiny houses are for everyone (in fact, some days I think we need a few more square feet for our growing family), there are lessons to be learned and applied to escape the cycle of debt almost 70% of Americans are trapped in right now.

And if the outcropping of blog sites, Facebook interest groups, fan pages, periodicals, TV shows, and the like, are to be taken as gospel, this is a continually growing movement! With international attention coming from CNN, AP, Guardian, Huffington Post, NBC, Oprah, PBS, HGTV, DIY, and more, it is safe to say that the general populace is learning about tiny houses as much for their design as their ability to serve as a sustainable lifestyle.

A good cross section of who inhabits tiny house or tiny spaces have a look at the infographic below (courtesy of TheTinyLife.com).

So the question sort of remains. What is the tiny house movement? Who is the tiny house community? What does the community stand for? The answer change each day. The more we rid ourselves of the buzz phrases and allow innovation to overcome us the more we find out. So the answer is probably more of what it isn’t. It isn’t bigger. It isn’t better. It isn’t more expensive. It isn’t cheaper. It isn’t novel. It isn’t a fad. It isn’t defined yet because it isn’t finished.

10 Comments

While I live in a 330 sq. ft. caboose, I do not in any way, shape or form, consider myself anti-establishment. Circumstances dictated my current living situation, which I have embraced over the years, and I don’t think I would change anything. I, too, dislike the word movement. It sounds like we are trying to overthrow something. Quite the contrary. It’s simply a life-style choice.

What a great article. I have tried to explain our choices to friends, the reasons why we are building a tiny home and they just see it as a fad. When I explain that we will live in ours for years, full time, they scratch their heads and think us mad. I know that not everyone sees this movement as a way of life but that’s the joy in it. They don’t have to accept it. For those of us choosing the tiny way of life, it’s perfect. It gives us what we need and want out of life.

I believe using the phrase of ‘prevailing culture’ helps define what the tiny house movement is. Not new. I was a late teenager when living in house holds or communities was something evangelicals did. And the nuns house down the street was not that different. You can still look all over the US and find very old tiny houses because not all of them, built with a small foot print, under 500 feet got torn down to make room for bigger and better. Hey, if the spot was a good place for the farmer or rural residents to build, it was still good when the developers came in.

Changing what prevailing culture called normal house size is historically documented in codes that municipalities drew up and in private covenants. Secret works for private in that situation. For some good reasons, and more bad ones. We found that the best way to keep economic uniformity in our planned communities was to put minimum size restrictions on new buildings.

The children growing up in families with 6-8 kids, a now nearly disappeared demographic, never expected to have a bedroom to themselves unless they were the trailers in the family.

Now the boomers, some of which got called hippies for a while, don’t forget my reminder us to use the phrase prevailing cultural norms, are sitting in boxes surrounded by lawns much larger than they want to spend either the time or money or energy to maintain much less heat, small pun.

It is not anti anything to encourage cultural norms to be evaluated and tweaked. Because we have good historical documentation of their manipulation as far back as our early founding fathers. We still strive for freedom in the land of the brave where we are all expecting to be allowed to pursue happiness, but those rights were held back systematically from the day before day one.

ALL YOU BUILDERS OUT THERE, HEAR YE, HEAR YE!!! WE MUST KEEP THIS MOVEMENT ALIVE. WE MUST ALSO MOVE THIS COMPLETELY ACROSS THE ENTIRE USA. WE MUST ALSO CONSIDER PEOPLE WITH WHEELCHAIRS, SENIORS, AND DISABILITIES. PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF THIS AND ANDREW, MY THIS COMMENT OF MINE AS VIRAL AS YOU CAN EVER GET IT. THIS MUST, THIS MUST BE ACCOMPLISHED, EVERYONE TAKE NOTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Steve and I are as right wing conservatives as they come. It is annoying to me that people assume we are liberal democrats because we have chosen to live simply from our RV. Our motivation is much as you related above, protest against the bigger is better mentality and big government intruding into our lives with taxes and regulations. Also as Christians this lifestyle enables us to free up our resources to be a true service to others, not just when it is convenient or financially expedient.

Thank you for the article. Tiny house “movement” is for many reasons and includes many walks of life.
Darci

I don’t think the “tiny house movement” is anti-American. It is expressly American, because it’s defined by independent thought and freedom. And so is any other chosen lifestyle which is characterized by freedom and independence, whether it’s bound up in a tiny space or a larger one.

I believe the “movement” is about ownership. We want to own a house, albeit a small one, and we want to own our time. I don’t think working as hard as I do that the majority of my income should go into someone else’s pocket. I want to own what I make and a tiny house helps this. Maybe if people owned more of their own time and salaries, they’d be better off in more ways than one.